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12 Social Media Marketing Predictions From the Pros : Social Media Examiner

Is your marketing ready for the coming changes? Looking for expert insight to help you get your marketing plans on the right track?

In this article, 12 marketing experts share their predictions to help you prepare your social media marketing plans for the coming year.

#1: Facebook Ad Costs Push Advertisers Off The Platform

Facebook advertising is going to get much more expensive in 2020, CPMs will increases and therefore it will now cost you more to reach your target audiences.

The implication of this change is that companies with a low average order value or that don’t change their view of how they evaluate their Facebook advertising returns, will be priced out of the platform. The statement that the business who can pay the most for a customer wins has never been more true. The solution to combating increasing Facebook ad costs is three-fold.

The first is to decrease your cost per purchase or cost per lead. There are numerous ways to do this; one of the most effective is continually refresh and test ad campaign components such as ad copy, creative, audiences, offers and objectives in order to reduce the impact of ad fatigue.

The second, which requires no work in your ad account, is to increase your average order value or client value. By increasing the amount that someone spends when they first buy from you, you create a bigger gap between your cost per purchase and the revenue from that purchase, therefore increasing your Return on Ad Spend.

The third way to combat increasing Facebook ad costs goes back to my earlier point; change the way you evaluate your Facebook advertising returns. Instead of measuring only your first purchase ROAS which is reported directly in Ads Manager, you should also measure your True ROAS which factors in your customer lifetime value.

True ROAS is the real worth of a customer to your business, when you acquire them via Facebook or Instagram advertising, and they become a repeat customer spending a multiple of what they spent when they first bought from you.

By using the lifetime value of your customers, you can attribute more revenue to your Facebook ads and therefore a higher overall ROAS and effectiveness for Facebook advertising as a marketing channel.

Achieving success with Facebook advertising now goes beyond just the media buying and dives deep into the fundamental components of your business such as pricing, product positioning and customer insights.

Charlie Lawrence is the founder and CEO of Gecko Squared, a Facebook and Instagram advertising agency that specializes in working with high-growth businesses from around the world.

#2: LinkedIn CPC Climbs Higher

Driving traffic in Q4 has always been expensive and this year is no different. LinkedIn advertising costs are currently high and a there was a significant jump in cost per click (CPC) when the platform released objective-based advertising in March. Perhaps LinkedIn’s objective based advertising created a more competitive marketplace in Q4 or maybe rising Facebook ad costs have pushed more marketers to LinkedIn. If CPC drops in January, we’ll  know whether the jump was due to seasonality or not.

Regardless, you need to know how to get the highest return on your LinkedIn advertising dollars in 2020.

First, I recommend that you always bid on CPC regardless of the ad format because its the lowest risk to you as the advertiser. Additionally, cost on CPC bids tend to be significantly lower than bidding by engagement or impression 90% of the time.

When you bid on CPC, begin low (at the base bid) and only raise your bid when you need more traffic. LinkedIn won’t tell you what the minimum floor bid is, so start with a low bid – say $2. LinkedIn will then give you a message in red that tells you what the minimum bid is; now you know where to set your opening bid.

Second, disregard LinkedIn’s bidding recommendations. More often than not, LinkedIn will select auto-bidding which is crazy expensive and the likelihood that your ads fall into the10% is low.

Finally, don’t use audience expansion. It’s just not worth it to pollute the traffic you’re paying for by letting LinkedIn ad someone you didn’t select to your audience.

AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro and founder of B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency. He manages sophisticated campaigns worldwide.

#3: Rising Ad Costs Lead Marketers to Refocus on Organic Video Content

 Facebook has more than 7 million advertisers and shrinking available inventory. The ever increasing costs of ads across every major social platform will encourage marketers to dust off their content marketing play books.

Smart marketers are making investments in high value video content that is super useful to future customers. We will see increased use of IGTV and YouTube content in social marketing. And yes, that YouTube content will be promoted using Facebook!

As time spent with content becomes a very valuable metric for marketers, video represents the ultimate scroll-stopping experience that can and will increase “know, like, and trust.”

Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner, author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers, and the man behind Social Media Marketing World–the industry’s largest conference.

#4: Stories Are Central to Visibility on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram Stories format will continue to grow in popularity throughout 2020. So much so, that regular feed content will noticeably slow down. And, it’s quite feasible that both Facebook and Instagram may start rolling out more robust tests of its blended feed and Stories format. Both platforms very briefly tested such a merged, horizontal interface and both were met with disdain.

However, most social media users balk at sudden, radical change so Facebook has to come up with a way to gradually phase in this merged feed on either or both platforms.

Stories have a more pronounced place in the mobile app.One approach has been to make the Stories “cards” bigger and more prominent on the Facebook mobile app, and to intersperse them throughout the regular news feed. Facebook also continues to make it easier and more enticing for users to publish content to Stories, by sharing daily memories and automatically publishing feed posts to Stories as well.

Marketers should understand why the Stories format is being pushed so heavily.

First, clear back in July 2016 on the Q2-2016 earnings call, Facebook CFO Dave Wehner declared that the company was running out of places in news feed to show people ads. To help mitigate this max ad load, Facebook spun up ads on Instagram in 2018, but soon started maximizing ad load there, too.

This means that Facebook absolutely has to find new places in which to provide ad placement. And those new places include Stories, video ad breaks, and Messenger ads, among others.

Second, the future of Facebook’s news feed has been in question ever since CEO Mark Zuckerberg published his 3,200 word privacy manifesto, declaring that the company would be pivoting away from permanent public posts and toward private, encrypted messaging.

Consider how incredibly easy it is for users to consume content in the Stories format. Tap, swipe, tap, swipe. The user is in complete control. They can view as much or as little of any individual account’s Stories as they wish. Additionally, creators can publish an abundance of Stories and not worry about jamming up their followers’ feeds. Plus, with the 24-hour shelf-life of a Story, creators have to keep producing content, which means more inventory for ad placement.

Inserting ads into Stories just makes sense and there’s plenty of inventory. On Facebook’s Q3-2019 earnings call on October 30, COO Sheryl Sandberg stated that of the more than 7 million advertisers across the Facebook family of apps, there are already 3 million advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Stories.

So, publishing more organic Stories and creating native Stories ads is a great place to focus in 2020. One hot tip for you: be sure to include interactive elements in your Stories such as polls, quizzes, sliders, questions, and donations. People love to touch their phones. Some studies show that people touch their phones over 2,600 times a day. And extreme cellphone users (in the top 10%) touch their phones as much as 5,400 times daily. Amazing.

Other notable trends and changes marketers would do well to observe is any new ad unit and/or ad placement options that Facebook and Instagram roll out. These include ads in search results on Facebook and ads in Instagram Explore. Video content will also continue to grow across all social platforms. I declared way back in 2013 that it was the Year of the Video. It seems that keeps being true every year since!

Mari Smith is known as “the Queen of Facebook,” and one of the world’s foremost experts on Facebook marketing and social media. Her agency provides consulting and training on Facebook marketing best practices for SMBs and brands.

#5: Personalized Brand-to-Customer Experiences Are No Longer Optional

I believe in 2020 brands are going to see a shift with online marketing and it will start with the dramatic rise of dark social conversations. Meaning more people are moving into private conversation channels.

Brands that haven’t focused on relationship marketing techniques will either spend more on their pay-to-play model or dive into building and hosting community conversations that create brand advocates and support a belonging vs buying mindset.

The latter will strengthen their online home bases (their websites) and create better, faster customer experiences online with automated processes through conversational marketing via chat as well as personalized experiences with dynamic ads, video emails, and text to do business.

To build deeper connections with their audience, brands will put more heart and personality into their brand story by aligning with feel-good causes and taking a strong stance on what they believe. Collaborations will still be important and brands will look to a new kind of influencer content in the form of stories from clients or team members.

Additionally, businesses will increase adoption of native tools like Messenger subscriptions, appointment setting and purchases on Facebook, shopping within stories, and convenience-based integrations to reduce any friction in doing business with them.

In 2020, a company’s story must be felt by their audience and the process of doing business with that company must be easy in order to win, keep, and activate their audience into becoming advocates.

Jessika Phillips is a social media strategist and founder of NOW Marketing Group, a Forbes recognized Agency Partner, and a certified inbound partner with Hubspot.

#6: Template-Based Marketing Fails to Produce Results

Most social media marketing fails because it looks like marketing. People are sick of marketing. Gone are the days when you can create a standard template image in Canva talking about “National [insert something generic] Day,” post it on social media and wait for the sales to roll in.

Social media is saturated and the cream really does rise to the top. To understand how to sell your product or service to your audience on social media in 2020, you really need to understand:

Now you can map your marketing efforts to provide the right message, to the right person, at the right time – driving conversions in a super creative way.

Who do you know that is as perfect as Frank?

Posted by Wahl UK on Monday, November 4, 2019

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Stop making bog standard template-based rubbish. Start creating entertaining advertising like this.

Dan Knowlton, a UK-based digital and social media marketing expert, has grown Knowlton (formerly KPS Digital Marketing) into a multi-award-winning business that works with the likes of FIFA, Nestle, Citibank, Eurotunnel, and Boston Consulting Group.

#7: Reducing Platform Channels Produces Better Results

The social media marketing industry changes at the speed of light and it’s not going to slow down in 2020. Here’s how to stay ahead of your competition:

Advertising costs will continue to rise. You will either need to build stronger ad strategies or stronger organic strategies.

To that end, platform-specific strategies will be key to the success of your marketing campaigns.

Your YouTube audience isn’t the same as your Twitter audience, and neither are the same as your Instagram audience. Don’t try and spread the same marketing messaging everywhere. Stop being a dabbler and cease using the platforms you barely use.

Take the time to master the algorithm on one platform at a time, and make sure you can put in a considerable amount of energy effort with every platform you manage.

Amanda Bond is owner of The Ad Strategist and the creator of The StrADegy System.

#8: Niched Marketing Is Key to Success

In 2020, the race isn’t to be everywhere and reach everyone but to reach the right people with focused intent. It’s about choosing the quality of engagements over the quantity of engagements.

How can your business make the shift?

Pick one thing you want to be known for, and stick to it!

Choose two platforms and excel on them. Choose these platforms based on your ideal client, your best performing content to date, and the platform demographics. Here are a few platform combination suggestions for you to consider:

Now, create a solid hashtag and keyword strategy around your one thing and keep your marketing hyper-focused on it.

In short, don’t do what every other brand is doing; do what’s right for your brand to reach your goals.

Peg Fitzpatrick, the co-author of the best-selling book The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users and beloved blogger, has spearheaded successful social media campaigns for Virgin, Audi, Mercedes, Google, and Motorola as well as brand ambassadorships for Adobe, Nestle, and Kimpton Hotels.

#9: LinkedIn and Pinterest Regain Traction

First, I think we’re going to see a continued consolidation and expansion of the incumbent social media platforms in 2020, namely Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Contrary to what a lot of people are saying at the moment, I see TikTok following a similar path to that of SnapChat in 2020. TikTok is a hot trend right now, but long term the user base will move on to a new hot platform in 2020 – just as they moved from SnapChat to TikTok in 2019. Businesses don’t want to continue to invest resources in the next big thing only to continue to get burned as attention fades and moves elsewhere, which is why I think they’ll refocus that energy into FB, IG, Linked and Pinterest in 2020.

The two platforms that I think will deliver disproportionate results are LinkedIn and Pinterest.

We’ve seen a resurgence on LinkedIn throughout 2019, and that will only continue to build momentum in 2020. The ad platform on LinkedIn has a long-held reputation of being prohibitively expensive for most small businesses and difficult to achieve a positive result on, but I think that will also change in 2020. We’re already starting to see ads on LinkedIn become more effective as they improve the platform for advertisers and I believe that will continue in 2020.

Pinterest holds a unique position as a social platform in that it behaves much more like a search engine than other social media platforms. Which is why I think marketers will give it more attention in 2020. Investments of time and effort in traditional social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn only deliver results for a short period of time.

The life of content on those platforms is very short – days at best. However on Pinterest, Pins can continue to drive traffic for years. It’s that long-term return on investment in the platform that I think will entice marketers who are looking for the best way to invest their limited time and resources in 2020.

Andrew Hubbard is the founder of Hubbard Digital, a social media advertising agency that specializes in helping online educators scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads.

#10: Personalized Micro-Engagements Are Essential

Small businesses who struggle to sustain a share of voice in the marketplace can make a deep impact with two strategic uses of Instagram.

First, when you or your business is tagged, featured or replied to in Instagram stories, be sure to send a personalized response via a voice note through Instagram Direct. When someone hears your voice, you (or your brand) become that much more real to them and they feel more connected to you.

Second, when people visit your business and post about it on Instagram, they may tag your location rather than your account’s username. Be sure to search your location tag and open every conversation to provide a personalized reply to thank people for their purchase or for visiting your business; it’s a great way to create a deeper connection with people.

Alex Beadon is an Instagram Stories expert and online business strategist who helps small business owners and marketers learn how to use Instagram Stories. She’s the creator of the online course, “Gram Slam” and a daily prompt subscription service, “Project Storyline.”

#11: Authentic Content Trumps Polished Marketing

2020 is the year the facade of perfectly polished marketing crashes and burns. Too many people have been burned by influencers faking it with perfect photoshoots, and consumers are desperate for authenticity. As consumers’ hunger for real answers grows, they are looking for signs of congruency, for proof that their favorite people are actually walking the walk on and off the platforms on which they engage.

2020 is the year of humanized marketing and the business who provides all-access, behind the scenes, contextual marketing wins. Here’s are 6 tips to help you beat the bandwagon marketers with authenticity:

Rachel Pederson is founder & CEO of award-winning social media marketing agency, The Viral Touch, and founder & CEO of Social Media United.

#12: AI Makes Humanizing Your Brand Imperative

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be the beginning of the end of marketing as we know it. 2020 will officially mark the start of the next industrial revolution and the social media industry will be affected in a variety of ways.

Data analysis and programming will become the new marketing manager’s role as AI replaces community managers and copywriters. Not even influencers and content creators are safe as it’s possible to us AI to build an entire persona. For example, Lil Miquela is a computer-generated influencer with 1.6 million Instagram followers at the time of writing.

Thus, humanizing your brand is more than a catchy hook; it’s a real business strategy that every marketer should take seriously to stay in business. Here are 5 ways to help humanize your brand in the next year:

Create content as if it’s coming from an individual. When a brand shares content on social media, they’re not just competing with other brands. They’re competing with everyone on social media for users’ attention, including an individuals’ friends and the celebrities they follow. As such, if you simply share salesy messages that sound like they came from a press release, social media users will scroll right past your content until they find something more social or entertaining to engage with.

Brands should try to create content that sounds more like it came from an individual than a corporate entity. Don’t be afraid to adopt a more personal, casual tone, and aim to create content that you would want to engage with yourself.

Engage in actual conversations. If someone comments on your content, don’t send them a copy-and-paste response. Instead, treat that message more like a note from a friend, and respond in a personal way. 

Similarly, you can jump into conversations others are having online. For example, if you’re a real estate agent in an area where you see someone talking about things to do in your city, chime in with a personalized response about what you think that person might like to do, rather than pitching your real estate services.

Give those conversations room to naturally evolve, and eventually, a personal conversation can turn to a more business-focused conversation initiated by the customer.

Highlight the employees behind your brand. Try showcasing what a day in the life is like for different employees at your company by letting them do a Snapchat or Instagram Stories takeover for the day or week. You can also share more content about company events and employee initiatives to help consumers connect with your brand on a personal level.

Today’s consumers don’t simply want to purchase from a logo. They want to purchase from companies they feel a connection to; highlighting your employees can help in that regard.

Give a voice to the customers who help make your brand what it is. Encourage customers to submit content as part of a contest you’re running. A restaurant, for instance, could ask customers to share their favorite holiday foods and holiday memories, and the restaurant could then choose a winner to receive a free meal and share their story on social media.

In doing so, you not only provide a more human element to your marketing, but you can also expand your reach by leveraging the individual networks that your customers each have when they share content related to your brand on their own channels.

Don’t try to be all things to all people: accept this as part of being human and it will also make you a better marketer. While you may be tempted to hop on every social media platform and try to amplify your message as much as possible, you likely won’t be very effective doing that. Just as it’s difficult for a person to be everywhere at once, your brand marketing will likely be diluted if you try to be active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok all at the same time.

Similarly, you can’t always comment on every trending topic or be funny, informative, inspirational and more, all at the same time. Focus on the platforms and content that you excel at.

By following these steps, you can form more genuine connections online, which tends to translate to more marketing success. The online landscape is too crowded for most brand messaging to stand out, so instead, organizations need to adapt by being more human to form connections that make a lasting impact.

Carlos Gil, author of The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI, is an international keynote speaker, and award-winning digital storyteller. He has over a decade of experience leading social media strategy for global brands including LinkedIn, Winn-Dixie, Save-A-Lot, and BMC Software.

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What do you think? Do any of these predictions surprise you? What are your predictions for the upcoming year? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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